“Conquest Over the World”

Scripture: Romans 8:26-39

For the past two weeks, we have been working our way through Romans 8, considering the power of God, in comparison to the power of earth. And we have come to know that God’s power leads us into glory, while the power of earth can only fail us at every turn, and will bury us in our sinful nature.

In today’s text, the power of God in Christ Jesus comes alive in us and proves its conquest over the power of sinful earth. And not just to destroy the presence of sin in our lives, but to be the power that sustains us, to be the power that revives us, to be the power that makes us whole, to be the power that unites us to Almighty God Himself!

Read Romans 8:26-30

And the power for our life in faith comes through the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that it is the Holy Spirit who will teach us and remind us of all that the Lord had taught (John 14:26), that this same Spirit of Truth would be the testament of Jesus (John 15:26), and that the Spirit would come to us after Jesus had left (John 16:7). The Spirit is not only the power of God for our lives, he is the power that is within us. He knows our greatest pain, he knows the thoughts of our minds and the desires of our hearts, he prays for us, and works for the good of those who give their lives to the Lord.
And if you tend to get hung up on the word “predestined”, read again the first few words of verse 29 – “those God foreknew he also predestined”. The Father knows those who Jesus knows, and Jesus knows those who know him (John 10:1-5). And it is only when God knows us that we are conformed in the image of Christ, justified in salvation and glorified to eternity.
But what is “conformity to the likeness of Jesus” all about? It certainly isn’t something to take lightly! Consider for a moment, what the nature of Jesus is for us. Jesus is about surrendering glory in exchange for humility. Jesus is about putting God’s truth far ahead of human understanding. Jesus is about suffering in himself for the betterment of others. Jesus is about doing God’s will, no matter what that may have meant to his humanity. And when we are conformed, or perhaps “re-formed” to his likeness, we surrender to the same objectives, the same authority, the same Divine needs that the Lord did.
It’s all about God and what he is doing in and through us. It is the Spirit of God who knows us completely, and not us who know all about him; it is the Spirit who conforms us to Christ, and not by our will; it is the Spirit who leads us, and not us who determines the plan and direction; it is the Spirit who strengthens us, and our own abilities and courage have nothing to do with it.
It’s all about God, and all for us.

Read Romans 8:31-39

In business, we hear the term “stakeholder”. A stakeholder is a person or group who has an investment, a primary interest, in a project or effort, and therefore, gets to make the guiding decisions. In general, there can be only one, or a very few at most, if the effort is to remain in the original focus. If the number of “stakeholders” becomes too great, the focus will be lost.
In the issue of faith, there is only one stakeholder (or maybe three, depending on how you look at it!), and that is God. The problem in life is that all too many people want to see themselves as stakeholders, right along with the Almighty. And when that happen, the focus gets all cloudy. The truth is that we are the recipients of the salvation effort, not the ones who have made it possible through their investment. God, and God alone, has invested himself in us, and we have given nothing to the process!
The Lord has invested his all in the effort to win us for eternal life, and his is the only vision, the only decision, that matters. We have given nothing of value to the effort, and therefore we have no say in how it all will play out. And personally, we should all be very happy with that arrangement! Ours is not a perfect and decisive life – we stumble, we fall, we get covered in mud and muck and slime, we make poor decisions and take wrong turns, and the probability that we could ever gain heaven on our own is absolutely ZERO!
But God is All Mighty! All Knowing! All Perfect! All Wise! All Conquering! He doesn’t make mistakes! He doesn’t make U-turns! And he has already put everything in place that we might know salvation, and all that we have to do is accept Jesus as the source of new and everlasting life!

Samuel Shaw, a 17th century English pastor, wrote:
Happiness, heaven itself, is nothing but a perfect conformity, a cheerful and eternal compliance of all powers of the soul with the will of God.
--Samuel Shaw, 1699

Conformity in Christ is about our compliance, by faith, to the Lord, which, in itself, leads to a life in the will of God. And what do we get in this will of God? Nothing less than the unshakable, inseparable, indescribable, victorious and eternal love of God in Jesus Christ. NOTHING can ever separate us from this incredible relationship with God that has been made possible by the glorious life of Jesus. The power of God is never about condemnation – it is about renewal, it is about casting aside the deficient and being clothed in the perfect, it is about being made and remade in the best possible way. It is all about God, and it is all for us.

(At this point in the service, an invitation for a healing service was offered – that folks could come for themselves or someone else, that they could come alone or with a friend, that they could come for healing in body, spirit, faith, relationship, or any other issue that is troubling them.)